Subaru Tops Reliability List, Tesla Intensifies Leasing, 12 Days of Ship-Mas

Kyle Mountsier  0:00  
Good morning. Friday morning, December 6, I got Ben Hadley hanging out right over here next to me. I'm so excited to hang out with him. We're talking about Subaru top and reliability this Tesla leasing with the P must. Ben, how you doing? Been a long time since you've been a long time since you've been on the show, bro, dude,

Ben Hadley  0:24  
it has, and actually, the last time I think I did, I would do it with Daly. Oh, wow, yeah, wasn't it? Have

Kyle Mountsier  0:29  
you completely cloned yourself with AI? Yet? Has that happened?

Ben Hadley  0:33  
Ben hadley.com/ai, you can talk to me. I'll press the top right button, press the call button. It'll be my voice chat with me.

Kyle Mountsier  0:41  
So the answer yes, yeah, the

Ben Hadley  0:44  
answer is yes. It's pretty good.

Kyle Mountsier  0:45  
It's not like you're not watching this on video. This is the real Ben Hadley that I'm talking to right now. So there is, it's no good at least. I think someday I won't know

Ben Hadley  0:54  
scale. I'm scaling, Ben scaling, scaling. That's scary.

Kyle Mountsier  0:59  
I don't know if we I don't know if automotive needs a scaled Ben, I'm not sure that's I don't know if we're ready. Man, hey, this afternoon, we got a couple things going on. We are. We have a webinar with stream companies talking about how to build your marketing plan for 2025 that is this afternoon, at 2pm Eastern. You can go to asotu.com That's asotu.com scroll down. Hit the link. Don't miss it. If you can't be there, register. You'll get the recording right after. You can kind of figure out what you're doing over for 2025 if you haven't started to figure that out, there's no better time than the present, because things are going to get crazy next year. Um, also, if you haven't figured out what you're doing for nada, you can go to nada parties.com. Start to scope all the parties. Make sure you get tickets to the ASOTU Party, which is on Friday night. We're partnering with upstart clairvoy to make sure and do that. It's a two hour happy hour. It's your first stop. You don't you just in and out, see all your friends, get some sick swag, and get on with your evening. But you gotta go to nada parties. Com, just so you know, industry partner tickets, they sold out in like three days. There's a few dealer tickets left. We don't have a lot of space. You gotta make it happen. So you're gonna be there. Ben, you gotta be there.

Ben Hadley  2:20  
I'll have to get off the use of I'll use my dealership.

Kyle Mountsier  2:23  
Oh, boy. Now, yeah, cancel, cancel,

Ben Hadley  2:27  
my family. Come on. Oh,

Kyle Mountsier  2:28  
that's true. I like I can, I can,

Ben Hadley  2:32  
I can I can,

Kyle Mountsier  2:34  
you can lean on that. You can lean on that's fair. All right, let's get into it. Hey, we're looking at Consumer Reports, 2025 brand report card and Subaru has topped the reliability rankings, while domestic automakers are struggling to keep pace and things like safety performance and reliability metrics, you know, things that people actually care about when they're driving cars. Subaru's overall score was 82 edging out BMW at 78 and Lexus at 77 it also topped the reliability rankings for the first time, dethroning Lexus and Toyota for the first time, brands like Honda, key and Hyundai joined Subaru, Lexus and Toyota in the top 10. Chrysler, listen to this, jumped eight spots to 16th, while Ford, GM and Jeep fell in rankings. Still as an overall trend, plug in hybrids and EVs are remaining less reliable overall than conventional hybrids, though the gap is starting to narrow. Obviously, the notes are just that the more you change, the more technology that goes in there, the more the You're early. Seems like. You know, the reliability isn't all the way there yet, although the obviously, the gap is closing.

Ben Hadley  3:46  
Call out two things. One, it's odd to me, and this would be such a longer discussion, but it is odd to me that BMW climbed up so much, and for some reason I associated the delicacy of a BMW with its luxury, you know, just like, you know, jaguars break a ton. I almost said the word we can't even say without people freaking out, but jaguars, you know, break all the time. But that was like, part of the draw is like, Yeah, I'm rich enough to afford something that breaks all the time. It's like, No, I think it is.

Kyle Mountsier  4:21  
I mean, the rover, rover, it is, you know, Land Rover, the same thing. It's fine.

Ben Hadley  4:28  
I don't care. It's baller. I can just deal with it. But then you have, like, Subaru, right? Toyota, these are, like, the most reliable, like, yeah, don't even touch it for 20 years. It's going to be fine vehicles, and it makes you feel like, yeah, value, for sure, value, but luxury. I don't know. I don't know there's something in there. Another one

Kyle Mountsier  4:49  
that is, you want to know? The one that shocked me, actually, it was sitting in the four spot. Was Porsche in the four spot for overall, the. The overall brand report card for road test, reliability, satisfaction and safety. Pretty impressive.

Ben Hadley  5:05  
That is impressive. Like, I wish I could afford one. Um, I was more. I was more blown away by the EV statement. I think, like, I keep on I, you know, I'm in a bubble, but I keep on reading that EVs are so reliable, and they're so like, there's only one thing could ever break. You know, there's only five parts. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier  5:26  
I think, I think people are looking at rely. Well, the Consumer Reports study always looks at reliability, also from a pardon me, software's perspective. And even though you get this, like, auto update over the air, right? People are experiencing software breakage more often, just in their day to day, right, which we're used to, and kind of like, it's like, oh, my iPhone isn't working great. Turn it off, turn it back on. It's fine, you know, right? But that's not a normal course of events in our cars, where even though you might not be going to the shop to get something fixed. You're still experiencing this, like, feeling of not being as reliable as maybe what you expect, right? I think that's yeah, I

Ben Hadley  6:10  
would throw like, the weird part is to traditionally, I probably never, in any of my ice vehicles use, for example, the software on the vehicle. Yeah, right. There's always immediately, like, apple, but, you know, Apple, Android Auto, something. So I don't even know if that stuff was working. Like, I don't know if their GPS work.

Kyle Mountsier  6:30  
Nobody even thought to check. Actually,

Ben Hadley  6:33  
I don't think anybody logged in. Zoom reports is like, yeah, like, plug in Android Auto. I don't you know it's, just forget

Kyle Mountsier  6:41  
about it. It'll be,

Unknown Speaker  6:43  
yeah, man,

Kyle Mountsier  6:45  
hey, let's, we're gonna keep moving. I got no segue. Well, hopefully we get a segue. I'm

Ben Hadley  6:49  
not giving you one, dude. I'm not.

Kyle Mountsier  6:51  
Tesla is making a stronger push into leasing to sustain its us. Sales momentum, the lease penetration this year has gone from 8% in 2023 It peaked at 31% in April of this year, and then is down to about 15% as of September. Obviously, the notes just a little bit old on that, just looking at all of the registrations, obviously, some automakers are seeing lease penetration on EVs up to 90% leveraging the $7,500 tax credit to reduce that initial cap cost, making, obviously, leasing the incentive the best incentive for EVs. A lot. Tesla also is now allowing buyouts for all its vehicles, including the model three, model Y and the cyber truck, enhancing appeal and leasing to its next to its consumers. Elon Musk has still this year, set a target to surpass last year's 1.8 million global deliveries, despite reporting a 2.3% sales decline through the first three quarters this year. So they're hoping for a big rebound. Maybe leasing will be a big part of that.

Ben Hadley  7:59  
Yo, and he's all, he's in the news being like, get rid of the 7500

Kyle Mountsier  8:05  
why? Well, well, because it's not going to impact him that much longer.

Ben Hadley  8:10  
Oh, got it. Got it. Yeah, you

Kyle Mountsier  8:12  
want, you're like, you're like, Oh, you only got a few of those left. Anyway. You're trying to not,

Ben Hadley  8:17  
okay, fair, fair.

Kyle Mountsier  8:19  
Nobody's even talking about that. It's really great.

Ben Hadley  8:23  
And I do we should we did have a segue? We were like, laid up on EVs. You could have been like, Hold on. Let me try to do my first segue. It would have been speaking of reliability test that's COVID, that was

Kyle Mountsier  8:40  
strong. I'm proud of you for getting your first segue. That was my first, yeah, I this is, I've, I've kind of contended for this weird I was just talking to Paul earlier this week about and Michael Cirillo about the fact that there is, there are a couple EV auto, actually, I think it's Neo in Europe that is really challenging, like the ownership journey and doing these short term leases with battery swaps, so you're actually leasing the battery, and then the, you know, the vehicle is kind of a shell around it. And so I still, I still think that, you know, it's yet for, like, the financiers, to kind of figure out what the matrix is similar to phone life cycles and how, you know, people are moving in and out of these EVs and then keeping them on the road with the used EVs. Do we continue, you know, do we see a lot more leasing and used as well? Because I think people are just going to get used to that technology upgrade over two or three years, a little bit more than even we had in the past, you know, seeing like a 3.1 year trade in cycle. We might see that trade cycle increase because of EVs, because people are looking for the latest technology, the best batteries, all of that, especially as EV adoption is still kind of on an upward, upward trend.

Ben Hadley  9:56  
Yeah, I think, I think it all has to do with a. The residual. And basically, what freaks me out is, for a really long period of time, there was, like, no difference between a 2015 and a 16 Tesla, right, right? But then around like 2018 they're like, Oh, this one's going to be able to drive itself. You're like, the one I bought last year, what about that one? They're like, Nah, sorry, yeah. It's like, with Apple, being like, hey, this one will have AI that can do everything for you. And you're like, Well, what about the do that the 13 that I got in my pocket. Nah, dude, sorry. So I think we're gonna see the residual of those ones start having really funky metrics around them. Because it's like, yeah, there's these giant swings where,

Kyle Mountsier  10:52  
yeah, they just, you just can't even do anything with it. Basically,

Ben Hadley  10:55  
totally Yeah. It's like, huh, cool. Good luck. Yep.

Kyle Mountsier  10:59  
Speaking of upgrades segway, all right, stay tuned for the next 23 minutes of our podcast, as Ben talks about the open AI 12 days of ship miss, and in their first day they dropped chat GPT pro it's a $200 a month plan that provides unlimited access. So none of that end of the day junk where you can't access it to open a eyes, GPT four, oh, and voice advanced voice memo mode. And they've said like, hey, it's going to allow for anything else that starts to use extra compute power through through its platform, the o1 model replaces the o1. Preview now offers faster, more accurate responses with better capacities and things like math, coding and reasoning with images. I think it's 128k context window, and has like 34% image recognition and image generation. A newly announced grant program will also provide free pro subscriptions to 10 medical researchers with plans for broader grants in other fields. Open AI ships includes a 12 day series of announcements, including the long expected text to video. Ai tool for Sora. Lots of stuff coming. They've been prepping.

Ben Hadley  12:16  
Yeah. I mean, I instantly bought it. Instantly bought it. It's so ridiculous I was telling you before, I really need to, like, look at my my bills of how many AIS I've employed at this point. But that one was an Instant Buy. I think the ability to have unlimited compute is actually an insane bargain. Sounds crazy, for 200 bucks, but I personally would almost every day go over the limit of chat, G, P, T, it'd be like, Hey, wait until like four o'clock and you can come back and get like, No, I that's not happening. So you end up making other accounts or whatever. It's super annoying. Um, have you heard Sam Altman, though he he has this plan that he calls you Universal Basic compute. No, it's the same idea, same ideas like universal basic income, like we all need a certain amount of income in order to survive. His the thought is that we all need a in the future, we'll need a certain amount of compute to survive. Interesting and so, yeah, and so this actually looks like his first step towards that, which is like, let's get like, an idea of how much compute everybody would maximally need. And then, you know, you could start divvying out compute as a sort of resource,

Kyle Mountsier  13:42  
like, everybody gets internet kind of thing. Everybody gets, yeah, yeah.

Ben Hadley  13:46  
Everybody gets a little bit of AI. And then, you know, if you need more, you ramp it up. You

Kyle Mountsier  13:51  
ramp you know, what's crazy. I read a stat yesterday that over 40% of the US currently has never engaged directly now, potential now, and this is like, intentionally engaged with an AI service, so anything that someone like isn't isn't maybe an AI chat on a you know, company website like intentionally subscribe. Shout out. Shout out. My

Ben Hadley  14:15  
buddy, close buddy, one of my best friends. Drag on. You have ditch. He texts me this video. He's like, this is insane, and it's just chat GPT talking

Kyle Mountsier  14:31  
where you been.

Ben Hadley  14:32  
He was like, you could, like, make a podcast, just talking to this thing. And I was like, bro, yeah, because he sent me this YouTube video I watched. It was a 15 minute one. So you're like, all right, bro, you know, you know you love someone when you're gonna watch the full 15 video that they send you. So I watched the whole thing. I'm like, bro, when's it gonna get interesting? He's like, the phone is just talking to the guy. And I'm like, so that gave me, like, a real idea of how much of a bubble I live in, right? Absolutely,

Kyle Mountsier  15:01  
yeah, I'm, I'm literally sitting, I'm on a plane this week, and this person next to me is talking to someone across the aisle, and they're like, Have you heard of this new AI stuff? Like, that's, that's like, that's the mentality. So, you know, again, when you think about, like, the gap, to the knowledge gap that exists right now and the opportunity that early adopters have to like, understand and be ahead. It's a six month curve right hit that button for

Ben Hadley  15:32  
me, bro, that's it. I got my second segue. Stop segway.

Kyle Mountsier  15:40  
You have to say the Segway first you Oh,

Ben Hadley  15:44  
my bad. My bad. Part two, let's do it again. Part two, speaking of early adopters in AI, we got a newsletter for you to sign up for. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier  15:52  
you definitely should. It's auto industry.ai. And we're just trying to give it look. There is a if you only sign up for the prompt of the week. It we're giving you like practical tools to understand, like prompt language every single week the type of language, the type of like, fleshing out that you need to give GPT or any other engine to, like, really give you the right feedback. Instead of, I see so many people just typing in like seven words and trying to get something out. No, it's you Google. Treat it. Yeah, you're treating it like Google. You need to treat it like a person that you like in a like a real assistant that you're asking to do a deep task. And even using like, you know, turn words and and this, but that type stuff, and so if that prompt a week is the only reason why you go to auto industry.ai. And sign up for the the weekly email. You gotta do it.

Unknown Speaker  16:44  
Let's go. Let's

Kyle Mountsier  16:46  
go. Let's get into Friday. We got the first weekend in December rolling. This is still a hot one. This ain't Christmas yet. Time to put your selling shoes on, your servicing shoes on, loving some people a lot more than you love, of course.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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